


What's happening, Mrs Danvers?

by BlueVase, neednot



Category: Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier & Related Fandoms, Rebecca - Levay/Kunze
Genre: Danvich - Freeform, F/F, Lesbian Sex, Oral Sex, Sex in the Library, getting caught, mistress/servant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:35:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25314685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueVase/pseuds/BlueVase, https://archiveofourown.org/users/neednot/pseuds/neednot
Summary: The second Mrs de Winter and Mrs Danvers decide upon a little tryst in the library when Maxim is away in London. Unfortunately for them, Maxim comes home early.TW: assault, domestic violence.
Relationships: Mrs Danvers/I, Mrs Danvers/Ich, Mrs Danvers/the narrator, Mrs. Danvers (Rebecca)/I, Mrs. Danvers (Rebecca)/ich, Mrs. Danvers/I, Mrs. Danvers/Ich, Mrs. Danvers/the narrator, Narrator (Rebecca)/Mrs. Danvers (Rebecca)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 18





	1. Chapter 1

At the time, it had not seemed like the worst idea; a tryst in a place where we were likely to be caught. But Maxim was supposed to be in London, and the thrill of it had been too tempting to resist. 

She had taken me first; she usually did, not letting me even try to touch her until I had been satisfied. But now she had relented and here I was, kneeling on the floor in front of her as she sat in Maxim’s chair, her skirts pushed up, the heel of her shoe digging into my back, my mouth between her legs. Her long fingers dug into my scalp as I licked and sucked at her, wanting to please her. 

She gave a soft moan as I kept going, and I concentrated my efforts, wishing to unravel her the way she had me moments earlier, sprawled in my husband’s chair with her fingers inside me. 

“Good girl,” she growled. The hand that wasn’t wound in my hair she had placed on the armrest. Every time I flicked my tongue a particular way, her fingers drummed on the stiff leather. 

My knees were starting to hurt—not even the stiff carpet could prevent that—but I did not mind all that much, not when she was wet and trembling against me. Once, I had thought she was like an automaton, going through the motions of the living but not truly alive. Now I knew she was simply conserving her energy. As I pleasured her, it seemed to me that she was not so much spending herself as becoming stronger with every kiss I gave her, as if she and a clockwork toy truly had some sort of strange affinity and I was winding her up with the repetitive circling of my tongue. 

She was close; I could feel it, could taste it, even. She tasted sharp as vinegar, and soon she’d taste slightly metallic, like sucking on a penny. I wished she would let me put a finger inside her so I could feel her walls flutter and contract, but she did not care for it and so I never did. 

“Yes,” she moaned, yanking on my hair a little, “keep going, don’t you dare stop now, Madam.” Sometimes she teased me, bringing me to the edge and then not pushing me over, daring me to command her, forcing me to crawl out of my shell. I had never dared to do anything like it with her; I could not imagine she would welcome it, and I did not wish to antagonise her, merely to please her. 

I sucked harder, making her hips jump. Her thighs were damp now. Had I not been under her skirts, I could have looked up and seen little drops of perspiration on her brow. Once she had torn at her collar as she came, and I had seen her collarbones, and the little drops of sweat that had pooled in the hollow between. 

“God, yes…” she moaned, and her unravelling began. I lapped at her desperately as she rode it out, drinking her in, every part of me focused solely on her. “Yes—”

Her cries cut off abruptly and I stilled, my hands still splayed on her thighs. I tried to press my mouth back against her but surprisingly her hands were on my shoulders then, pushing me away from her. 

“Danny, what’s happening?”

“Yes,  _ Danny _ , what  _ is  _ happening?” The voice was cold, and my heart stopped.

_ God. Oh, God. _ My worst fears realized, because the voice I heard wasn’t hers. It was, unmistakably, my husband’s. 

I scrambled to my feet. Maxim stood at the door, his hand clutching the doorknob white with strain. I stepped away from Mrs Danvers, as if that would somehow make things right again, as if that would make Maxim interpret what he had seen in any other way. She stood, too, brushing her skirts down, and I wondered at her, at how she could stand so straight and tall only seconds after unravelling against my mouth. My attentions had brought a flush of colour to her cheeks. That, and the way her hands fluttered against the black fabric of her skirt before she folded them were the only signs something was amiss.

I found I could not look at Maxim. I knew it would be better if I did, if I could speak and apologise, or beg for forgiveness, but my throat felt very tight and queer. I had a strange, nagging little pain in the pit of my stomach.

_ Isn’t it marvellous,  _ I thought,  _ how I can stand here and nurse that little ache so I need not feel anything else? _ I ran my tongue over my lips and tasted Mrs Danvers. I felt I might weep, then. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, and that little gesture broke the spell that had kept the three of us still and hushed.

“My God,” Maxim said. His voice was strange, rough. I could look at him now. His face was contorted, his breathing heavy. His eyes were so hot with anger I could scarce bear his gaze. “My God,” he repeated, and then he began to laugh. The sound was horrible, very loud but completely hollow, all the mirth and feeling that normally accompanied it sucked out of it. 

I think I might have preferred it if he had shouted at me, had hit me, even, anything but that degrading laugh.

“Please, Maxim,” I begged, “please don’t. I…” 

He would not let me finish, and perhaps that was for the best; I don’t know what I might have said. 

“Do you know,” he began, “what people said when they found out I married you?”

“Please, I don’t want to know. I don’t…”

“They could not believe it. They tried to come up with explanations. Some think you were trying to comfort me when I was mad with grief over Rebecca. They think I bedded you and then wedded you because I am a gentleman and I would rather gamble away any future happiness I might have possessed rather than ruin you.” He laughed again. “A kind explanation, don’t you think? All very noble: you, a perfect little ingénue trying to nurture a wounded man, and I desperate for love after the untimely death of my first wife.”

He felt in his pocket for his case and lit a cigarette with his long, sensitive fingers. They were very steady. “Of course,” he said, plucking the cigarette from his mouth and exhaling a plume of smoke, “others were less kind. Some people whisper that you have done very well out of this, haven’t you? From a penniless little nobody to Mrs de Winter in a few weeks flat. They imagine you seduced me when I was half-mad with grief. That is why they run their eyes over your belly, you know, though I never know what would please them more: to see you were, in fact, with child, or to find you aren’t and might have lied about it to ensnare me.”

I touched a hand to my belly.

“I knew they talked about us, knew they gossiped, but I didn’t particularly mind,” Maxim said. He took a deep drag from his cigarette. “You see, I knew they’d never understand that I had married you because you were so very different from Rebecca.”

“Enough!” Mrs Danvers said. I looked at her from the corner of my eye. She stood there, her hands clasped in front of her, staring at Maxim with that cold fury on her face, her back ramrod straight. 

He ignored her. It was as if she wasn’t there, not to him, and I marveled at how he could ignore her so completely when every nerve in my body was so painfully, acutely aware of her presence. 

Maxim took another drag on his cigarette. 

“So very different from Rebecca,” he repeated, almost to himself. His cold glare fixed on me. “My first wife had many flaws, that I will admit, but unlike you she was not a sniveling, cowering child. If those gossips even knew what you were really like, you who for the first three months of our marriage had to be constantly reminded to sit up straight, to speak up, to look me in the eye.” His expression was almost bored. “Rebecca may have been a whore, but she at least had the beauty, the brains, and the breeding to hide it. You can’t even claim that.”

“That’s  _ enough _ ,” Mrs Danvers said, and when I looked at her her dress was clenched tightly in her fist, her knuckles white. Maxim did turn toward her then, focusing the full intensity of his hatred on her, palpable so that even I shrunk away from it. 

“Rebecca told me about you, you know,” he said, crushing his cigarette in the ashtray on the little table next to the door. He took a step towards her and I wanted her to move, shout, do something except stand there staring. “About the disgusting, vile things she’d do with you. I always thought it was a joke; my wife did so love to exaggerate, to make up stories, especially to rile me up.” His gaze flickered to me, just once, before he turned back to Mrs Danvers. “Though I can see now perhaps she wasn’t lying, and that you really are as depraved as she said. I hadn’t counted on you trying to pervert another wife of mine, though.”

Mrs Danvers smiled. It was a horrible smile, cold and strange, more of a snarl and a baring of the teeth than a true smile. “My only wish on this Earth, Mr de Winter, is for my mistress to be satisfied.”

Maxim’s face was a tight, white mask now. “You unnatural bitch,” he said, and then he flew at her with his fist raised. “Do you think I will tolerate such perversion in my house?!”

“Maxim, stop!” I cried as his hand started to come down, hurrying to him, grasping desperately at the fabric of his sleeve, trying to keep him from her. “It's not her fault, I—I wanted to do it, please, Maxim—”

He whirled on me then, his elbow catching my face, and I staggered and went to my knees, crying out at the sudden, sharp pain in my nose, pressing my hands to it, already feeling the hot blood pouring down my face and between my fingers, copper and salt on my tongue. 

The pain made my eyes water. Through the blur of tears I could see that Maxim had grabbed Mrs Danvers by the hair and was hauling her to the door. I tried to stand, to stop him, but was suddenly dizzy and sank back to my knees. Maxim said something to her I couldn’t make out, and I heard the library door shut behind him. Then there was nothing but the sound of my own breathing, of Maxim’s footsteps muffled by the carpet. 

His hand closed around my elbow and pulled me up; I had to lean against him so I wouldn’t fall to the floor. “Let me see,” he said.

“No,” I moaned, but he pulled my hands away and forced me to look at him. His eyes were very blue, very cold. A trickle of blood ran down my throat. I felt sick. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and began to wipe the blood from my mouth and chin, scrubbing at it roughly; it had begun to clot. When he placed his fingers on my nose and pressed against the cartilage, I thought I might faint with the pain. After a while, he let go. 

“It isn’t broken,” he said. “It’s bruised, of course, and it shall hurt for days, but at least it is not broken. You might get two black eyes, though. You poor little dear.” And he touched the skin under my eyes with a fingertip, stroking little lines. Gooseflesh rippled over my body.

“Maxim, what will you do with Mrs Danvers?”

It was the wrong thing to have asked; I knew that as soon as the words had left my mouth, and yet I could not have stopped myself from asking.

His eyes flashed. He was still clutching my elbow. His fingers now dug painfully into my flesh. When he spoke, his voice was soft and low. “I never want to hear the name of that damned woman again, do you hear? You will not speak of her. You won’t even think of her.” 

I felt weak and faint. My heart was pounding, and that nagging pain in my belly became very sharp, very acute, like the twisting of a knife. 

Would Maxim hurt her? I could not have imagined it an hour ago, but that was before he had wound his hand in her hair and dragged her out of the library. He was proud, that husband of mine, and one to nurse a grievance. He would ruin Mrs Danvers if he could, and I could not let that happen.

She was my housekeeper. I was responsible for her, and for what we had done, and so I must protect her. 

I tried to smile and put my hands on Maxim’s face, brushing those haughty cheekbones of his with my thumbs. “You know it didn’t mean anything, don’t you, darling? It was just that you were gone all the way to London, and I missed you so dreadfully, and Mrs Danvers… she’s a queer one, Maxim, she really is. She’s so eager to please. I shouldn’t have encouraged her, but I was… well, I don’t know what I was. Not in my right mind, I suppose. You see, I get so dreadfully, damnably lonely when you are gone, I just don’t know what to do with myself. I pine like a dog for you, truly I do…”

He put a hand under my skirt then, those long cool fingers of his pressing between my legs. “You’re dripping wet,” he said.

“I… I thought of you. I thought of you all the while.” This a final, crawling sop to win him back.

“Did you now?” he sneered, and yet there was this flicker in his eyes, this desperate wish to believe me. He began to kiss me then, harsh, hungry kisses, caring nothing for how his cheek and jaw rubbed against my bruised nose. He lapped at the blood on my face, and the taste of it seemed to do something to him. He pressed against me, and I could feel him, hard and large. 

_ Where,  _ I wondered,  _ was this insistence, this passion, during all these months of marriage?  _ I had longed for it then, with the sick, guilty longing of a child wanting that what is forbidden. She seemed very distant to me, this self who had wished for Maxim’s flaming desire, because now that it was happening I only felt panic clawing at my insides, and under that a peculiar sort of weariness.

“Don’t,” I said, and still he kept kissing me, his hand rubbing roughly against me. Only when I shoved him did he stop. He stared at me, his face white and mask-like, tight with anger.

“Maxim, please, not here, not now. Please, darling, I’m not well. Later…”

He seized me by the throat, crushing my windpipe. 

_ Oh,  _ I thought as I struggled with him, trying to pull his hands away and not managing it,  _ I never thought being strangled would hurt so.  _ The sound of the sea was in my ears, waves breaking upon the shingle. His face, that beautiful, medieval face of his, became overlaid with dark spots. 

Maxim could not have choked me for more than a few seconds, but it felt like a lifetime. When he let go, I crumpled to the floor, coughing and retching. Every breath was liquid fire, and yet it was sweet, so very sweet, to inhale. 

He reached for me; I cowered, fearing his wrath, but he merely helped me up and guided me to my chair. He rang for Frith then, and ordered him to bring some ice, Mrs de Winter had fallen and hurt her face. 

He poured some brandy into a glass, but my hands were so unsteady I could not hold it; he held it to my mouth as I sipped, wincing at the pain in my throat, at the sharpness of the drink. 

Frith brought me some ice wrapped in a towel. I pressed it against my nose, feeling the water drip down my arm and wetting my sleeve. I took some of the sweating cubes and knotted them into my handkerchief, then draped it around my throat. 

Maxim lit a cigarette and opened a window. The good, clean scents of hot stone and fresh grass entered the library. He thrust a hand in his pocket and stood smoking. “The rhododendrons are almost spent,” he said, and he sounded very calm, very sane, “but soon the roses shall bloom in all their glory. You’ll like that, won’t you?” 

I lifted my head. 

“Yes,” I said wearily, every word a burr in my throat. “Yes. I’ll like that very much.” 

  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

Hours later my nose was still throbbing as I curled up in the dark of my room, my face still hot. I had not let myself cry, not when Maxim’s elbow had caught me, not when he had hauled Mrs Danvers out of the library, not after when I was sitting with ice pressed against my swollen face and fear and adrenaline still coursing through my veins. 

We had eaten dinner together in silence that night, as I could only take small bites due to the pain in my throat. Robert and Frith had been the ones to serve us, and their stoic faces told me that whatever Maxim had told them, they would be loyal to him through the end of it. 

Clarice had gasped when she had seen me when she came to help me undress, and I had flatly told her the story Maxim had told the other servants, that I had fallen. She had seemed to accept it and was in fact even more kind to me than she normally was, which had made me feel all the more guilty that I was lying to her. 

But what was I supposed to say? Maxim had accidentally hurt me when I’d stepped in front of him to stop him from hitting Mrs Danvers? That the only reason he was going to hit Mrs Danvers in the first place was because she had stood up for me, and that she had stood up for me because Maxim had begun degrading me because he had caught Mrs Danvers and I together? 

No one would believe that. I could scarcely believe it. 

But I was the one lying in the dark with a swollen face, and then I was crying, finally allowing myself. Maxim had locked me in my room, and I had not seen Mrs Danvers for the remainder of the day. I didn’t know if she was even still on the grounds, what Maxim had done with her. 

I heard a key turning in the lock of my door and stiffened, hastily wiping my eyes so that Maxim would not see me crying. I didn’t want him to come in; couldn’t imagine what he wanted --unless he had decided that now he wanted to rut with me after all. 

But the steps that entered my room weren’t Maxim’s heavy ones; they were light, quick, the steps I had grown so familiar with the past few months. 

“Danny?” I whispered. 

“Hush,” she responded, and very quickly shut and locked the door behind her. She switched on the lamp by my door and I flinched at the light. 

When my eyes had finally adjusted I looked at her. Her face was drawn and tired, more so than I had ever seen in my time at Manderley. Her hair was tightly pinned like always, and if I didn’t know of what had transpired that afternoon I wouldn’t have guessed anything was wrong. 

She wordlessly stepped over to me and took my chin in her hands, her skin ice-cold, and despite everything I still found myself leaning into her touch. But I couldn’t look at her, focusing my gaze on a spot just above her shoulder. 

“I should kill him for this,” she murmured, her fingers lightly stroking my throat. 

“It was an accident, Danny,” I said tiredly. “He caught me in the face with his elbow.” She turned my face towards her then, her expression sharp. 

“An accident? Him hurting you may have been an accident, Mrs de Winter, but if you hadn’t stepped in my face would look the same.” She traced over the dark prints on my throat where Maxim’s fingers had been. “And this doesn’t look like an accident.” 

“I provoked him,” I said, and she scoffed. 

“I’m sure,” she said dryly, “a man choking his wife is a reasonable response to provocation.” 

I wanted her to pull me to her then, rest my head in the warmth of her chest, her thin arms wrapping around me. But I couldn’t stop thinking of what had happened the last time we touched, of the shock and anger in Maxim’s voice when he had found us together. 

She sighed and finally released my chin and I found I immediately felt the absence of her touch. Her hands stilled by her sides, but after a moment I caught that tell of her running the fabric of her dress through her fingers. 

“I just came,” she said softly, “to tell you that come morning I will be gone from Manderley. Mr de Winter has relieved me of my position.” 

It took me a minute to fully comprehend what she meant. When I finally understood I did reach for her then, clutching the fabric of her dress in my fist and standing so I was close to her. 

“Mrs Danvers, you--you can’t--”

“I don’t have a choice,” she said. “Surely you’re not naive enough to believe he’d let me stay. At least he is giving me a good reference; he wants me to go with as little fuss as possible. I suppose I should be grateful for that, as should you.” She looked down at me. “You do know this could ruin us both, if it got out? If Maxim decided to not protect you anymore?” 

I nodded, and she reached out and smoothed a thumb over my cheek, much the same way I had to Maxim earlier. 

“I know,” I said. 

She was quiet for a moment then, her teeth worrying her bottom lip before she caught me staring and stopped. 

“You could come with me, you know,” she said. 

I did not know what to say. I passed a hand over my face, momentarily forgetting how bruised it was, and I hissed and near cried when my palm pressed against my nose. “Oh, Mrs Danvers,” I said, “I don’t think I could. Where would we even go? I’ve no money, none at all. When Maxim found me I was desperately poor; you know that.”

“I’ve money, Madam, you need not worry about that. The position of housekeeper pays well, and I have always been thrifty. And since you are used to poverty, I’d say your needs are naturally few.”

I stared at my hands, at the nails bitten down to the quick, at the calluses on my palms. A few months of being Mrs de Winter could not erase years of labour; these were the hands of a girl used to hard work, not those of a lady at all.

Mrs Danvers saw me look. She took my hands in hers; already her skin was a little warmer, her fingers a little less limp. “These are good hands, strong hands,” she said, squeezing them. 

“Oh, Danny, they’re the hands of a grubby little schoolgirl.”

She pressed them against her face, kissing the red knuckles, the scar on my palm when I had pared an apple for Mrs van Hopper and the knife had slipped. “You may have gotten used to being Mrs de Winter, Madam, but your hands remember your life before, and they shall serve us well, should it ever come to that.”

I felt a spasm of anger then and pulled my hands back, dropping them in my lap. “Do you know what you are asking of me? Of what I shall lose if I leave?”

Her face became cold then, the only live thing in it her smouldering eyes. “Do you know what I have already lost for you? Do you not see that you will lose things regardless whether you stay or leave?”

I felt tears prick behind my eyelids. I dashed them away with my fingertips, not caring that it hurt the sensitive skin underneath my eyes. “I’m not stupid,” I whispered.

“No, you’re naive. An innocent, that’s what you are, and that is why you don’t see. Leave with me and lose being Mrs de Winter, lose living at Manderley, lose the protection of your husband. Stay with him and lose me and, eventually, your life.”

I stared up at her. “My life?”

Her gaze flickered down to my throat. “He did not strangle you today, but will he stop before he does the next time you displease him?”

I remembered the pain of swallowing at dinner, the feel that every bite was a shard of glass cutting my throat to ribbons on the inside. I could not look at her. “With you gone, I won’t displease him.”

She laughed. “Oh, you will. Men who hit their wives never stop of their own accord. You shall walk around on eggshells, and for the first few weeks after I have left all shall be well until you are lulled into trusting him again. In some unguarded moment you will say something then, or do something that shall anger him, and he will correct you with his fist. Soon, every little thing will displease him, and one day he shall go too far and bash in your head against the wall, or strangulate you, or kick you in the belly till you spew up blood. And when the police come to take him away --  _ if  _ they come, Madam, because Mr de Winter knows a lot of men willing to look the other way, a lot of friends willing to perjure -- they shan’t convict him. Do you know why?”

I wished to put my hands over my ears. I shook my head weakly.

“Because he shall tell them that you were a straying wife, and the police, the judge and jury, all those men who must see that justice is served, will concur that a husband has the right to discipline his wife in such a case.”

“You’re wrong,” I whispered, “people don’t do that. This is not France; a  _ crime passionel  _ doesn’t get a man acquitted here.”

“Of course it does. Mr de Winter has gotten away with one already.”

I looked up at her, staring at that queer pale face of hers, those burning eyes and the haughty mouth. “What do you mean? What are you talking about?” I asked wildly.

“You know what I mean.”

“No. No, Mrs Danvers, I don’t, not at all. Maxim has a temper, but he wouldn’t…”

“I can’t prove it,” she said. She began to pace around the room with those quick silent steps of hers, tearing at the stuff of her dress. “I can’t prove it, but that doesn’t mean that I am wrong. Your husband murdered Rebecca. He’s a jealous man, you see, and she was more than simply beautiful; she was bewitching. Men lost their heads around her, and she played with them because lovemaking was a game to her. How he used to rave at her behind closed doors, how he used to threaten…. And she laughed, my mistress did, because she found him pathetic. He did not scare her; not even the devil did. He used to hit her in the beginning, too, but she fought back, once near clawing his eyes out. He was no match for her, so he had to teach her a lesson through cunning. The night she died, I went to his rooms to say I was worried about her, she shouldn’t sail in such a storm. He looked strange, frightened, the whites of his eyes showing like a scared dog. I felt then that something had happened. When she hadn’t come back the next day, I went to his rooms again when he was out. The gun wasn’t in its proper place, and I knew then he had murdered her and hadn’t even been man enough to face her without a firearm.”

I didn’t know what to do, what to say. I stood and put my arms around her to stop her mad pacing. She took hold of my chin again and made me look at her. “Don’t you see?” she whispered. “He murdered Rebecca; what’s there to stop him from murdering you, too? And that is why you must come away with me. We could leave now; I’d pack a suitcase for you. You don’t need much, and I’d take care of you, of course I would. You are my mistress now, aren’t you? I wouldn’t let you grub.” She clasped my hand. “I would see to it that these hands grow soft and white as orchids.”

“Oh, Danny,” I murmured. 

“I’m not one to plead, you know that,” she said. “But I shall never forgive you or myself if you stay here with him.” 

Her gaze was hot, unbearable. “Come with me, Madam. Please,” she added, the word soft, one I was unused to hearing her say. I knew how much it had cost her to say it.

I couldn’t answer her, so I kissed her, my mouth on hers searing.

She put her hands on my shoulders and pushed me back. “Your face,” she gasped, “your poor bruised face, I don’t want to hurt you, I…”

“I don’t want your pity or your gentleness, Danny, not tonight. Not now.”

Her eyes flashed. “Then what do you want, Madam?”

“I want you to fuck me.” I cupped her face, stroking those sharp cheekbones with my thumbs. Tears blurred my sight. I smiled, ignoring the painful tug of muscle and flesh in my cheeks and nose. “Please, Danny, I just want you to fuck me.”

It did something to her, that word. Never before had I been assertive with her like this, never vulgar; I wondered now if perhaps she had desired me to be both. 

She began to kiss me, very fiercely, very wildly. I stumbled; she wound an arm around my waist to keep me upright. Her fingers clasped my chin, the tips digging into my cheeks as she devoured my mouth. I desired her so strongly that I felt I could hardly stand; the tightness between my legs was sharp, sudden, searing. 

She came on me so fiercely I kept retreating, my hands struggling for purchase on her slippery dress. I plucked at the pins in her hair with my right hand; she gasped, and I remembered how sore her scalp must be from when Maxim had dragged her out of the library by the hair. I stopped and placed my hand on her waist, but she took hold of it and put it back in her hair. 

I jolted into something hard and it almost made me cry out. I twisted my head. The vanity, I had walked into the vanity, nothing to be truly startled by. Mrs Danvers reached for a jar of cold cream and put it to the side, carefully trying to clear some space for me. I twisted round and swept it all away with my arm, my brushes and combs and barrettes, the bottle of perfume Mrs van Hopper had given me because it had displeased her, the powder box and the leather manicure set. They rained onto the carpet with dry thuds.

Mrs Danvers pressed against me from behind, her hand slipping under my nightgown. Her long lean fingers found that sweet aching place, and I moaned, bending over so I pressed against her harder. She pulled me up and turned me around so she could kiss me again. I put my hands on the vanity and sat down on top of it as she rucked up my skirt and tore at my knickers, all the while flaying me with her kisses. 

“Oh, Danny,” I whispered, my hand on the nape of her neck, keeping her face at my throat as she sucked another bruise there. I wound my legs around her. She rocked into me, and that was good and right and proper, feeling the sharp blades of her hips biting into the soft flesh of my thighs.

She put her hand between my legs again, parting me with two fingers. She stroked me with a fingertip, very softly, smearing out my wetness. 

“Harder,” I told her. She placed her palm against me and began to rub quite fiercely, quite harshly. I put my mouth against her shoulder to stifle the moans I could not contain. If the feel of my teeth hurt her, she did not let on. 

“You’re so wet, Madam,” she murmured. I knew; I could feel it dripping from me, unto her slick hand. I came with little warning, bucking and crying. Normally she ceased her motions then, simply pressing her finger hard against me so I had something to rock against. Now, she simply kept rubbing, and it was too much, it was so good it was unbearable.

“Danny,” I moaned, “oh Danny, dear God, it’s too much, my love, it’s too much…”

But still she wouldn’t stop. Instead she pushed me down till I was lying with my back on the vanity. She put my legs against her, the hollows of my knees resting on her shoulders, and then she pushed a finger inside me. 

“Oh!” I cried out. I tried to get up, but she leaned forward and I couldn’t, I was pinned down by her. I grabbed the edge of the vanity, feeling the wood bite into my hand as I clutched at it. 

“Don’t you see?” she hissed as she began to move her finger in and out of me, her thumb slipping on my wet flesh as she fumbled for that strange little nub that Maxim never seemed to realise existed, “Don’t you know by now, Madam, that he will never make you feel this way?”

And she added another finger, and another one, and a fourth, until I thought her hand would disappear inside of me. She put her hips behind her hand and thrust with force, and it was so strange to feel her move inside of me, so good, that I did not know what to do with myself. I put a hand over my eyes, relishing the pressure the side of my hand put on my nose. My thighs burned. The pain and the pleasure seemed to mingle till I could no longer distinguish them from one another.

My unravelling began as a deep pulsing low inside of me. It rippled out in waves, so strong I bit my knuckle to keep from screaming yet still I cried out, feeling how my body tugged at her hand as if wishing to devour it. It seemed to go on forever.

When I came to myself, I realised the wooden surface of the vanity was wet with my sweat. Mrs Danvers pulled her fingers out of me. I felt strangely bereft. She put my legs down and helped me sit up. She was panting; little droplets of sweat had formed on her brow and upper lip. I wound my legs and arms around her then, wishing to keep her close to me. She tried to keep her soiled hand from touching me; I took hold of it and sucked her fingers clean one by one.

I rested my cheek against her chest, hearing her heart galloping, smelling the sweet, intimate scent of her body. “I cannot bear for you to go,” I whispered, my throat choked with tears.

“You know what you must do then. I won’t force you; you can come of your own accord.” She paused and stroked my hair. “But I would like you to come, Madam” she said softly.

“Oh, Danny, what a mess I got us in.”

She dropped a kiss on the crown of my head. “It was as much my fault as yours, Madam.” 

In a bit she would have to let me go; we could not risk Maxim finding us again. Already we were being careless. She would have to go to her room and fold her dresses and wrap them in tissue paper; she would have to comb out her hair and braid it for bed. What little books she had needed packing.

But for now there was only this, my cheek resting against the soft rise and fall of her chest, and that was more than I had dared hope for. 

  
  



End file.
